Step 1: Plan

Outcome: a initial project plan. Figure out who's going to do what, set a schedule, look at your existing site and some example sites to get you thinking about the options. Identify your primary audience(s) and the messages and information they need most. Look at your primary processes and identify those that your web site can help you improve.

Duration: One hour session

Description: Let's talk... It's best to have your entire department present for this conversation, and we'd like every voice to contribute. The Web Team and possibly someone from Communications typically attend these, and, in addition, we like to invite representatives from closely-aligned departments that may be affected by this work.

Expect us to:

provide you with some background. We'll look backward, look forward, look at where you are now... What is the point of this project?

explore your department's perspective as well other stakeholders' such as our students, the college, etc.

push you to define and assign roles and responsibilities and ongoing ownership against a time line

reinforce effective practices

use concrete examples to illustrate core project values in action. Here's an example: The "people quilts" on the homepage and throughout the site express the value this community places on putting people first. (additional ex.: updated and easy news flow expresses the value of "make Wheaton stories easy to share and more visible")

For Editors

Sometimes a department will want to launch a simple site, then add new features in stages. That's fine with us. If there are major features you hope to add, they should be included in the schedule we agree on at the beginning.